Starting Monday 2nd November for 4 days, and it promises to be one hell of a series. This year we will be coming to you live from a brand new location, in the stunning south west of Scotland. This Wildlfowl & Wetland Trust Reserve is one of the best places in the UK to see Autumn in action as thousands upon thousands of birds arrive from as far away as Greenland, Scandinavia, and Iceland. For many birds, Caerlaverock is one of the most important places on the planet – for next 5 months the entire population of (27,000 thousand of them) will make these fields and marshes their home.

Caerlaverock was once a working farm, which has developed into a 1500-acre reserve including farmland, saltmarsh and freshwater wetland habitats. In keeping with its history it now ‘farms’ for wildlife and as a result now offers unparalleled opportunities to get up close and personal with like whooper swans and badgers. The nearby market town of Dumfries is also home to a wealth of urban wildlife – we hope to capture the kingfishers, mergansers, dippers and otters that thrive on the autumn riches of the River Nith. And we will have reports from up and down the country as we track Autumn – and whatever surprises lie in store for us this year.

On łÉČËÂŰĚł2 Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games will be out and about on the farm, or retreating to the barn if the weather gets cold! Chris will be looking at Setts in the City (urban badgers), Michaela will be eloping to Gretna Green in the hope of meeting one of the UK’s biggest starling murmurations and Martin will report from the Island of Rum where he has been on a gruelling night-time stakeout to unravel some extraordinary nocturnal shenanigans of the red deer rut. We will also have reports on Pine Martens from Iolo Williams, urban red kites from David Lindo & a spider spectaular from Nick Baker.

On Red Button & Online there will be live wildlife cameras throughout the day. You can join Richard Taylor-Jones in the hide every morning for a truly alternative breakfast show as the reserve wakes up. At lunch you can go birding with Brett Westwood and at 4pm Lyndsey Chapman and guests will round up the day on Autumnwatch Extra. And of course at the end of the day, you can join Chris Packham for .

It’s all happening, all we really need is you. So tune in, and get involved. Whether it’s through , , or drop a comment in below we want to hear from you, be a part of the shows, tell us what you think and above all show us what this Autumn is like for you... see you there!

Well, we comeĚýto theĚýend of Autumnwatch 2012 and as always we're keen to know what you thought.

We feel genuinely privileged to have been here in the Scottish Highlands with unique access to watchĚýanimal behaviour, particularly from some of our rarest and illusive animals - the pine marten, and of course beavers, otters, badgers and many more.

We come to the end of Autumnwatch and here in the Highlands we've already had the first flurries of snow and the animals are preparing for winter.

We'll be back with Winterwatch in January for 4 more live shows and we'd love to hear how the onset of winter is affecting the wildlife near you.

So if you could keep your cameras and phones handy when you are out and about. And if you spot something interesting, please let us know.

For photos, please eitherĚýshare them with thousands of others on the .

If you've captured some amazing video, please upload it to your video site of choice - YouTube, Vimeo, Google etc, and post us a link below.

Or if you have just have a question or comment about how winter is affecting wildlife around you, please post a Reply below or drop us an email to autumnwatch@bbc.co.ukĚý.

Thanks in advance!

Holly

The winds are still blasting in from the west and slowing things down. Despite this a few birds are on the move.

More Waxwings have arrived today and there are birds spread across the country. I think we can finally start to think about the possibility of a Waxwing winter.

A small arrival overnight Ěýof Woodcock is a little surprising given the conditions, although it was a clear night in the east which might have prompted their movement. Now is the peak time for Woodcock migration, all we need is for the temperature to fall in eastern Europe to trigger a large scale movement to happen. As the temperature there is due to drop this weekend and the winds become lighter on Sunday, perhaps that will be the day.

Toget you in the mood for the Unsprung Pub Quiz tonight, we've put together a little warm-up quiz.

9 eyes from 9 UK animals for you to guess.

Eyes quiz

Here's wildlife cameraman and director Richard Taylor-Jones to introduce the marvellous film from last night's Autumnwatch about the knot spectacle inĚýSnettisham.

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The idea of going to Snettisham was put to me by Holly, the Autumnwatch Series Producer. Could I come up with a film that centered on the autumn spectacle of the 100,000 Knot that gather there at this time of year and at the same time convey the feeling of the landscape too?

When making a film about a landscape its very important to me not to only to convey what somewhere looks like, and sounds like, but what it feels like. Every landscape has a feeling and to re-create that feeling is my challenge as a film maker, as well as to explore why it exists.

As was to be expected after a day and night of strong westerly winds, migration is a little quiet on Wednesday.

Small numbers of finches continue to move and involve the usual suspects. , , , and . The numbers are in the low tens, with the exception of Chaffinch that are moving through east coast sites in the low hundreds.

continue to trickle into the country. The first 100+ flock has been seen on Orkney and smaller flocks are being found along the east coast. There are probably around 300-350 Waxwings in the country at present.

Small numbers of are still on the move. How much longer might we see them moving through migration watchpoints?

don't seem to be arriving at the moment but that could change later Thursday and into today.

While filming golden eagles on Uist for Autumnwatch, Producer Jo Stevens asked presenter Iolo Williams about his experiences with Golden Eagles.

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Jo: Why are golden eagles special to you Iolo?

Iolo: As a young lad I Ioved reading books and learning new things. My favourite book was from the Ladybird series, the ‘Birds of Prey’. It had a Golden Eagle on the cover and I remember looking at it and thinking, ‘wow, that is a proper bird!’ As an adult I’ve spent a lot of time watching White-Tailed Eagles which are cracking birds but they’re not very active compared to Golden Eagles. The classic eagle of our imagination is the Golden Eagle.

The other thing about Golden Eagles is they are really difficult to see. Whenever I’ve gone to look for them in the past it’s been in the Scottish Highlands and they’ve just been a speck in the distance. You’d consider yourself lucky if you got closer than a mile to one.

Ěý

Jo: What are the challenges of filming Golden Eagles on Uist?

Iolo: Golden eagles have remarkable eyesight so you have no chance of getting close to one before it’s spotted you. That makes it very hard to film them, and of course if they fly off you can’t follow them easily – even with a vehicle you’ve got no chance of keeping up with them not least because it’s very windy in this part of the world, so the birds can ride the gusts and be miles away in no time. It’s probably fair to say that if you do manage to film an eagle it’s because that bird has let you do so.

Ěý

Jo: How does this trip to Uist compare with previous experiences with Golden Eagles?

I’ve had the best views of Golden Eagles I’ve ever had here on Uist. We’ve been privileged to be in the company of this one family for 4 days, following them constantly. It’s nice because it’s as if they’ve decided to allow us to follow them, to watch them hunt rabbits, watch them messing about, landing on the dunes and spending time being a family. And if they didn’t want us around all they need to do is take one flap of the wings and they’re away on the wind.

During this trip the birds have more relaxed, more tolerant of our presence than I’ve experienced before. To watch them last night in the autumn light, as it reflected off the golden head of the eagle was just stunning. That is one of the things that will stay with me now until I die. It has been a real privilege.

Quite a few of you have been asking what happened to the animals we were following earlier this year on Springwatch. Here's a quick update on just a few of them.

The Bath peregrines
The breeding pair produced two chicks, one male and one female. Sadly only the female survived fledging. She is still in the area and local experts are hoping she might breed next year.

Essex fox family.
The eleven cubs dispersed at the end of the summer. Though no one knows for sure what has become on them, three foxes are still visiting the garden and investigating the den site and keeping it clean.

Dyfi Osprey chick
The Dyfi ospreys had three chicks but two chicks died in the rain. One male chick called Ceulan survived. He was satellite tagged and then migrated flying 3000 miles south to Senegal in West Africa in record time. Now he is feeding off fish in a tributary of the Senegal River and nearby irrigation ditches.

Kingfisher family
Sadly the kingfisher’s first brood were killed, washed out. But there were signs that the pair produced a second brood though unfortunately Charlie Hamilton Jones wasn’t able to follow their progress.

Ynis Edwin Barn Owls
There were 4 barn owl chicks and they all fledged successfully and dispersed. However the parent birds did not produce a second brood this year, possibly due to the bad weather.

With the wind coming from the east all week, hundreds of thousands of ‘winter visitors’ began to arrive on our east coast. Amongst the travellers, thrushes were well represented. Redwing, Fieldfare, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Blackbird and Ring Ouzel all arrived in force. Almost 22,000 Redwings were counted at Spurn Point, East Yorkshire on Monday alone. Other late autumn migrants arrived with them, including ‘falls’of Robin and Goldcrest and a large movement of finches that mostly involved Goldfinch, Chaffinch and Brambling. Black Redstarts were also quite widespread.

So far, this year’s autumn migration has been far from the norm. True, it has turned up some classic autumn vagrants and a good haul of top-drawer rarities from both the west and the east. But for those that monitor migration something has been missing.

Migration is largely monitored at coastal watchpoints around the UK, where observers religiously count the number of birds they see, either passing over the site, or that have been grounded by poor weather. This year the migration of common birds has been steady, and large movements and falls have been few and far between. In effect, most summer visitors have steadily trickled out of the country, whilst the winter visitors have steadily trickled in.

Exceptions have included a large movement of Jays in eastern England. The BirdTrack reporting rate for Jay routinely climbs at this time of year, as birds make regular foraging flights to collect and cache food for the winter. However, this autumn’s reporting rate has been the highest ever, reaching 39% (compared to the average of 27% for the first week of October). High-flying birds and large numbers were noted in many unusual locations. In Norfolk, for example, at least 668 passed over Hunstanton on 6 October. Such observations hint that some of the Jays being seen may be of continental origin, though the picture is complicated by native birds dispersing from breeding areas in search of food.

In contrast, the number of rarities has been spectacular, with at least twenty-six different species from North America, including the finding of the Western Palaearctic’s first Eastern Kingbird on the west coast of Ireland. Forty-one different species have arrived from the north and east that have included mini-influxes of Lanceolated and Pallas’s Grasshopper Warblers. And it’s not over yet.

So what can we look forward to? Last weekend saw the first big arrival of winter thrushes, almost 23,000 Redwing, 10,020 Blackbird, 9,345 Fieldfare, 835 Song Thrush, 57 Ring Ouzel and 10 Mistle Thrush were counted at Spurn Point, East Yorkshire on 22 October alone. The picture has been pretty much the same along the east coast from Northumberland to Norfolk. With the winds due to stay in the east for the next day or so we should see more of these birds arrive. By the end of the week and going into the weekend the winds are due to turn northerly and come straight out of the Arctic. This could prompt the arrival of our first Bewick’s Swans for the winter and a strong movement of Little Auks.

Ěý

We know that many of you have nest boxes and some of you have even rigged up nest-cams to see what goes on inside. But it’s not just birds that use these boxes – at this time of year they can make a nice cosy little home for a host of other creatures.

So why not turn on your nest-cam or have a peek inside and sends us images of anything interesting that you find inside.

Please either let us know with a Reply below, email us your photos to autumnwatch@bbc.co.uk, with the subject header NEST BOX or upload them to the Autumnwatch Flickr site.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

If you’re out and about looking at autumn leaves keep your eyes peeled for ‘galls’.

They are weird and wonderful looking lumps and growths found on the leaves and stems of plants as a result of the activities of another organism like a fungus or parasite. The most familiar of these are ‘oak apples.’ We’ll be revealing the secrets of galls on Autumnwatch next week programmes and would love to have some of your photos to talk about.

Here's a few you've uploaded before.

We’re trying to find out what effect this summer's weather has had on our wildlife, aside from a bumper crop of slugs! Have you noticed anything strange going on with wildlife since August, anything odd going on recently? We've had reports of swallows delaying their migration and hares boxing in October...

Fancy joining us for a wildlife pub quiz? We’ve been putting our heads together to think about “unsprung” on the last day of Autumnwatch…Ěý (Friday2nd Nov) and have decided to let our hair down, turn the studio into a pub and settle down – with you – for our very own “Autumnwatch Unsprung pub quiz and lock in”… Complete with cocktails and exotic barmaids (level headed Jo of course…)

Here’s the twist – not only can you join in at home – (either by shouting answers at the telly – or were hoping to have a downloadable question sheet) but – we’d love it if YOU could set the majority of the quiz questions.

Think - who, what, where, when, odd one out, what happened next, mystery objects, photo quizzes, sound quizzes etc etc.

So if you, or perhaps a group of you, fancy becoming our quiz setters for the night and can come up with intriguing questions for our teams (and the entire nation) - drop us your question by email to autumnwatch@bbc.co.uk – we’ll use your them to drive the “UnsprungĚýPub Quiz”.

Thankyou!

UPDATE: We've had a problem with our email between 11th - 19th October. If you did try to contact us during that period we'd really appreciate it if you re-sent the email.